This article from the Chicago Tribune outlines Obama's electoral victories. For State Senator he didn't run against anyone. For U.S. Senator he ran against an individual who didn't live in Illinois.

Interesting that the article was from last April but didn't seem to make any difference in the primaries. A few reasons this might have occurred: 1) no one knows the story because the rest of the nation's major media outlets didn't run with it then; 2) everyone heard the story then but forgot about it; 3) everyone heard the story then but decided it wasn't a big deal.

I find it interesting that the rhetoric and the actions don't match up any better on the left (and in some ways even worse) than on the right.